No Compromise: Spurgeon

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

The Origin of the Show and the Spirit of No Compromise

My name is Mike Abendroth, and today we're talking about biblical issues, hopefully in a provocative way, hopefully in that order, speaking of the one who never compromised, Jesus Christ. Now, it was five years ago, and WV &E asked me if I would do a radio show.

I said yes. I needed a name. I needed a format. I needed everything else. I'm trying to think of a name. It was actually my wife who said, Oh, it should be called No Compromise. That kind of fits your personality and your desire not to compromise.

And so it was hatched. I'm trying to think of the English, the British term for something that started. We'd hatch it. I remember when Carl Truman was here, and he talked about controversy. So there's no controversy about No Compromise Radio.

I emailed Carl and said, Could you be on the show? He said, Maybe in January. So we'll see. Spurgeon preaches a sermon, No Compromise, God's Answer to Pragmatism. And so this particular sermon is reprinted by the chapel library, mountainzion .org.

And I wanted to read a little bit of Spurgeon's sermon, No Compromise, so you can get a flair, a flavor, what's a favor flavor? To this end, let us revise our doctrines, some are old-fashioned, grim, severe, unpopular.

Let us drop them out. Use the old phrases so as to please the obstinately orthodox, isn't that good? But give them new meaning so as to win philosophical infidels who are prowling around. Pair off, P-A-R-E, the edges of unpleasant truths and moderate the dogmatic tone of the infallible revelation.

Say that Abraham and Moses made mistakes and that the books which have been so long had in reverence are full of errors. Undermine the old faith and bring in the new doubt. For the times are altered and the spirit of the age suggests the abandonment of everything that is too severely righteous and too surely of God.

Spurgeon says, the deceitful adulteration of doctrine is attended by a falsification of experience. Men are now told that they were born good or were made so by their infant baptism. And so that great sentence, ye must be born again, is deprived of its force.

Repentance is ignored. Faith is a drug in the market as compared with honest doubt. As compared with honest doubt and mourning for sin and communion with God are dispensed with to make a way for entertainments and socialism and politics of varying shades.

A new creature in Christ Jesus is looked upon as a sour invention of bigoted Puritans. I mean, this could be written today. It is true. With the same breath, they extol Oliver Cromwell. But then 1888 is not 1648 or 2013.

What was good and great 300 years ago is mere cant today. That is what modern thought is telling us. And under its guidance, all religion is being toned down. Spiritual religion is despised and a fashionable morality is set up in its place.

Do yourself up tidily on Sunday, behave yourself, and above all, believe everything except what you read in the Bible, and you will be all right. Be fashionable and think with those who profess to be scientific.

This is the first and great commandment of the modern school. And the second is like undo it. Do not be singular, but be as worldly as your neighbors. Thus is Isaac going down into Padam Aram. Thus is the church going down into the world.

Men seem to say it is of no use going on in the old way, fetching out one here and another there from the great mass. We want a quicker way. To wait till people are born again and become followers of Christ is a long process.

Let us abolish the separation between the regenerate and the unregenerate. Come into the church, all of you, converted or unconverted. You have good wishes and good resolutions that will do. Don't trouble about more.

It is true you do not believe the gospel, but neither do we. Can you imagine? Spurgeon, no compromise. You believe something other or something other. Come along. If you do not believe anything, no matter.

Your honest doubt is better by far than faith. But you say nobody talks so. Possibly they do not use the same words, but this is the real meaning of the present day religion. This is the drift of the times.

I can justify the broadest statement I have made by the action or by the speech of certain ministers who are treacherously betraying our holy religion under pretense of adapting it to this progressive age.

The new plan is to assimilate the church to the world and so include a larger area within its bounds. By semi-dramatic performances they make houses of prayer to accommodate to the theater. They turn their services into musical displays and their sermons into political harangues or philosophical essays.

In fact, they exchange the truth for the theater and turn the ministers of God into actors whose business it is to amuse men. It is not so that the Lord's Day is becoming more and more a day of recreation or of idleness and the Lord's house either a Joss house full of idols or a political club where there is more enthusiasm for a party than zeal for God.

Ha, me. The hedges are broken down. The walls are leveled. And to many there is henceforth no church except as a portion of the world. No God except as an unknowable force by which the laws of nature war.

This then is the proposal. In order to win the world the Lord Jesus must conform himself, his people, and his word to the world. I will not dwell any longer on so loathsome a proposal. Now those words, could there be any better words written outside of scripture that call down fire on this modern thought?

This is exactly what's happening today. Unbelievable. So I just got done reading from Spurgeon's sermon, No Compromise. And he will go on to say, I want to find this other spot. All right, here it comes.

The Gospel Preached Plainly Without Compromise

More on No Compromise from Charles Spurgeon. Even so, in the opinion of many, brethren beloved, there are many things which I might allow to other worshipers which I have denied myself in conducting the worship of this congregation.

I have long worked out before your very eyes the experiment of unaided attractiveness of the gospel of Jesus. Our service is severely plain. Our worship service is severely plain. No man ever comes hither to gratify his eye with art or his ear with music.

I have set before you these many years nothing but Christ crucified and the simplicity of the gospel. Yet where will you find such a crowd as this gathered together this morning? Where will you find such a multitude as this meeting Sabbath after Sabbath for five and thirty years?

I have shown you nothing but the cross, the cross without flowers of oratory, the cross without the blue lights of superstition or excitement, the cross without diamonds of ecclesiastical rank, the cross without the buttresses of a boastful science.

It is abundantly sufficient to attract men first to itself and afterwards to eternal life. In this house we have proved successfully these many years this great truth that the gospel plainly preached will gain an audience, convert sinners, and build up and sustain a church.

We beseech the people of God to mark that there is no need to try doubtful expedients and questionable methods. God will save by the gospel still. Only let it be the gospel in its purity. This grand old sword will cleave a man's chin and split a rock in half.

How is it that it does so little of its old conquering work? I will tell you. Do you see the scabbard of artistic work so wonderfully elaborated? Full many keep the sword in this scabbard and therefore its edge never gets to its work.

Pull off that scabbard, fling that fine sheath to Hades, and then see how in the Lord's hands that glorious two-handed sword will mow down fields of men as mowers level the grass with their scythes. There is no need to go down to Egypt for help.

To invite the devil to help Christ is shameful. Please God, we shall see prosperity yet when the church of God is resolved never to seek it except in God's own way. My name is Mike Gabendroth. I'm reading from Charles Spurgeon's sermon, No Compromise.

My dear hearers, how much I long to see you saved, but I would not belie my Lord even to win your souls, if they could be so won. The true servant of God is responsible for diligence and faithfulness, but he is not responsible for success or non-success.

Results are in God's hands. If that dear child in your class is not converted, yet if you have set before him the gospel of Jesus Christ with loving, prayerful earnestness, you shall not be without your reward.

If I preach my very soul the grand truth that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ will save my hearers, and if I persuade and entreat them to believe in Jesus unto eternal life, if they will not do so, their blood will lie upon their own heads.

When I go back to my Master, if I have faithfully told out his message of free grace and dying love, I shall be clear. I have often prayed that I might be able to say at the last what George Fox could so truly say.

I am clear. I am clear. It is my highest ambition to be clear of the blood of all men. I have preached God's truth so far as I know it, and I have not been ashamed of its peculiarities, that I might not stullify my testimony.

I have cut myself clear of those who err from the faith, and even from those who associate with them. What more can I do to be honest with you? If after all, men will not have Christ and his gospel and his rule, it is their own concern.

If Rebecca had not come to Isaac, she would have lost her place in the holy line. My beloved here, will you have Jesus Christ or not? He has come into the world to save sinners, and he cast out none. Will you accept him?

Will you trust him? Will you believe in him? Will you be baptized in his name? If so, salvation is yours, but if not, he himself hath said it, he that believeth shall not be damned. Oh, do you not expose yourselves to that damnation?

Or if you are set upon it, then when the great white throne shall be seen in yonder skies and the day of wrath has come, do me the justice to acknowledge that I bade you flee to Jesus, and that I did not amuse you with novel theories.

I have brought neither flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, nor any other kind of music to please your ears, but I have set Christ crucified before you and bidden you believe and live. If you refuse to accept the substitution of Christ, you have refused your own mercies.

Clear me in that day of all complicity with the novel inventions of deluded men. As for my Lord, I pray of him grace be faithful to the end, both to his truth and to your souls. Amen. Charles Spurgeon, No Compromise, God's Answer to Pragmatism.

Contending for the Faith in the Church and in the Home

Now, if you're not familiar with Spurgeon's ministry, you only hear him quoted from people and by people. Why don't you order from Chapel Library some of his sermons and you can read them. Now, if you spend some money on all of the sermons, you're probably never going to read all of them.

But you can begin to see, as it says on the back of this little brochure, the secret to Spurgeon's success. And even though he had a powerful voice and he mastered the English language, the secret to his success, it says on the back, was a deep yet very simple trust in and understanding of his Lord and Savior and of his great grace and love.

Out of this came a great longing to have others come to know, love, and to worship the Lord Jesus as he did. My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio, and we're talking about that very issue today.

And I have a question for you. When it comes to no compromising, whose job is it? In other words, lots of times we kind of pawn off the subject of no compromise to the leaders of the church, that is, the elders.

No longer having apostles today or prophets, elders are leaders of the church, Christ's church, that is. And we have slogans like this in our world. I'm a lover, not a what? Fighter. I'm a lover, not a fighter.

I would have to say that's compromise. In the midst of compromise, we have people who say things like, I'm a lover, not a fighter. Many will say, you know, I think that's the elder's job. They're to both teach sound doctrine and what?

Titus 1 .10. Refute those who contradict. That's the elders. They're the gatekeepers. They're the watchmen on the tower. They're the ones who are the under shepherds and they have the rod and the staff and they watch out for the wolves and the coyotes and lions and other ferocious beasts.

And so they do it. These days, we don't even want our elders to do that. People have a conniption fit if you call out somebody by name, either on radio or the pulpit. And the first thing they'll say is, A, that's unloving.

And then the next thing they'll say is, B, did you talk to them through Matthew 18? Totally misunderstanding what Matthew 18 is even for. My question to you is, are you not responsible to hold the gospel in its purity and fight off those who try to attack it?

And the answer is yes. That's why you listen to this radio station, because you want to know what the scoop is. So I listen to the show rather since I'm not on the station anymore. Jude, a bond servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James.

To those who are the called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once handed down to all the saints.

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed. Those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Jude says, I wanted to sit down and write to you a letter, an epistle, kind of maybe a little mini-Romans. Here's the gospel of God and His righteousness found in Christ Jesus. But he said, there's an attack.

And so what does Jude say? You know, I'm a lover, not a fighter. Well, 1 Corinthians 13, love rejoices with and in the truth. It doesn't do anyone any good. I met with somebody a while ago in kind of a pastoral counseling session, and I said, I'm not trying to whack you.

I'm not better than you. I need the gospel just as much as you do. But I need to tell you the truth. And they said, that's why we're here. We want to know the truth. It reminds me of Al Mohler's, I don't know if it's an apocryphal story or if it's true or not, Al Mohler's counseling philosophy.

Number one, what is your problem? Number two, what's the Bible say about your problem? Number three, why are we here? That is so classic. Jude is saying, I sat down to write a letter about our common salvation, but I was compelled.

I was forced. It's reflex action. Someone's going to hurt my wife. I'm going to pummel them. Even if I can't do it, I'm going to try. Someone is going to try to rape your wife. What do you do, man? Say, yeah, but the other guy's bigger.

So? I mean, there's something inside of a man that wants to protect his wife and children, isn't there? Well, you use the metaphor for the body of Christ as bride, and then you'll figure it out for the honor of the bride, for the glory of the bride, for the purity of the bride.

Somebody's got to stand up. And it's not just the elders. Must the elders stand up in a day of compromise? Yes. They should be leading the way. But should you? You should support your elders when they do.

And then you should also say, I need to stand up as well. Oh, no, but I'm too embarrassed. Who am I? I don't talk that way. I don't do those kind of things. It's lowbrow. It's uncouth. It's boorish. I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith.

Who is he writing to? To those who were called beloved in God and kept for Jesus Christ. Jude is not a pastoral epistle. This is for you. If you're a Christian, this is for you. He says at the end, but you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.

You ought to remember that. Verse 20, but you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keeping yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.

It's you. And so when you hear Spurgeon, I hope you say, we're glad that God raises up men like that in every generation. And I am supposed to, in my realm of influence, whoever my neighbors are, when the cross is attacked, when pragmatism comes rushing in, when socialism comes rushing in, communism comes rushing in, worldliness comes rushing in, consumeristic gibberish comes in, worldliness comes in, I have to put my foot down.

And I deal with parents all the time, and I go to airports a lot, and I cannot believe how people cannot control their children. They will not do it because it costs them. It costs them a little bit of rub.

Why do husbands just cave into their wives all the time? Because they'd just rather have peace. Peace is just easier, but it's a false peace. So men, talk to your wives, pray about it, and then make a decision.

And if your wives don't like it, your wife doesn't like it, you hold your ground. You experience a few hours or a day or two of she's not too happy, and then later she'll be happy because she'll say, my husband held his ground and I couldn't run over him like a mower runs over a grass, plowing it down.

Contending Earnestly Against False Teachers and Worldliness

My name's Mike Ebenroth, this is No Compromise Radio, talking today about no compromise. And I'm trying to urge you that in our day and age, when we have men who dream and defile and dispute about things as Jude talks to them, talks about them, and people who go the way of Cain, rush headlong into the air of Balaam, perish in the rebellion of Korah.

These men who are like hidden reefs in your love feasts, they care for themselves. They're like clouds without water. They're doubly dead, wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame-like foam, wandering stars for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.

When these people attack the church, you are to agonize in your defense, defending the gospel, promoting the gospel. And the way Jude does it, it's not even a negative thing. I want you to contend for the faith.

And so we're holding up in a positive fashion, this is the faith. Now, by implication, we're going to have to call out those who attack it. But the view here in Jude, verse 3, is positive. So, you know, that's just, I want positive Caleb kind of stuff, and encouraging.

Well, you read Jude, and you'll find it's encouraging. But it's encouraging not to just watch other people stand up for the faith, but you are to stand up as well. Spurgeons, Cramners, Taylors, Judsons, Camerons, Patons, Luthers, Slessors, Calvins, Brainerds, Careys, Whitfields, and the list goes on.

Don't we admire those men? Why? Because they're to be admired? No, God gave them the courage to do these things. Not a him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless with great joy.

To the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen. Where are the people who won't compromise any longer? Why do you just keep that up?

It's the time to stop. You can get the No Compromise Sermon written by Spurgeon from Chapel Library, it's down in Pensacola, mountzion .org, or you can email them at chapel at mountzion .org, a worldwide ministry of Mount Zion Bible Church.

My name's Mike Abendroth, this is No Compromise Radio, extolling King Jesus, the one who never compromised, and you can write us, and you can email us, suggestions too.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.